1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to systems for violation enforcement utilizing vehicle immobilization. In particular, this disclosure relates to systems for locating vehicles subject to repossession and for immobilizing the vehicles.
2. Background
Vehicles and other assets may be repossessed when a borrower is delinquent in payment of a loan or other contractual agreement. In a common scenario, if the borrower cannot timely service the loan and is delinquent in payments, the creditor may seek to repossess the vehicle or other asset, either directly or more commonly, through an affiliated repossession company.
The borrower may willingly relinquish possession of the vehicle or asset to the repossession company. In such circumstances, the repossession company may take possession of the vehicle or asset at the debtor's residence. In other situations, the debtor may not willingly relinquish possession of the vehicle or asset and, in the case of vehicles, may hide the vehicle or otherwise maintain the vehicle at an undisclosed location away from his or her place of residence. This renders it difficult for the repossession company to locate the vehicle.
Further, when a vehicle to be repossessed cannot be easily located, agents, “skip-tracers,” and “spotters” associated with the repossession company may randomly view the license plates of vehicles in areas known to be frequented by the debtor, often based on the description of the vehicle. However this is very expensive, inefficient and time-consuming because the agent, spotter, or skip-tracer may have a set of documents for each vehicle to be repossessed, and must cross-reference the documents in his possession with each suspect license plate that he or she views while driving or while a passenger in a spotter vehicle. Additionally, using an agent, spotter, or skip-tracer is inherently unreliable because it necessarily depends on the agent, spotter, or skip-tracer's ability to locate and accurately identify a vehicle.
Moreover, even when vehicles are accurately located, field agents, spotters, or skip-tracers are often unauthorized and unable to immobilize the vehicle. A spotter or skip-tracer must often return to their place of business and contact a creditor to receive authorization to recover the vehicle and/or a tow company to come immobilize the vehicle. Consequently, even in the scenario where the spotter is successful in locating a vehicle, the borrower will often be able to relocate the vehicle before the vehicle can be repossessed. While some agents may have access to various vehicle boots or similar immobilization devices while in the field, the agents will still often lack authorization to immobilize the vehicles that they have identified. Further, even in the case where the agent is able to locate and immobilize the vehicle, the creditor or repossession company must still return to the vehicle in order to remove the immobilization device if the vehicle owner makes the necessary payments to bring the loan current. This further contributes to the expense and inefficiencies of the process.